Media ‘need to be responsible when reporting on sex workers’
A leading Limerick-based NGO that promotes integration of immigrants in the area has urged the media to be responsible when reporting on the issue of prostitution.
Doras Luimní was reacting to a recent newspaper report that, the organisation said, depicted prostitutes in Limerick in a harmful way as an aggressive lot “plying their trade to the detriment of local businesses and men socialising in local nightclubs”.
While it acknowledges that the presence of the prostitutes in Limerick is problematic and upsetting for residents and local business, the group maintains there is a limited public perspective and understanding about sex workers.
Doras Luimní – one of 50 members of ‘Turn Off the Red Light’ campaign – stated that some of the women working in the area are young and under the control of powerful handlers, ‘pimps’ and criminals who keep them financially beholden.
“Our perspective is that demand is the crux of the problem,” said Doras Luimní CEO Karen McHugh. “The sex industry would not be thriving in Limerick were it not for the fact that substantial numbers of men are seeking to pay for sexual services. The nature of this industry is that as long as there is demand there will be supply.”
She added: “The cycle of exploitation is made possible by the existence of push factors including inequality, poverty and exploitation, which are recognised factors for the vast majority of sex workers.”
McHugh urged the public to engage in the ongoing Government consultation aimed at outlawing prostitution in Ireland while protecting those exploited by the industry.
Meanwhile, Longford County Council recently became the second council after Leitrim to pass a motion to support changing sex law in Ireland and make it an offence to pay for sex.
